Posts Tagged ‘Affordable Care Act’

Do you provide health care benefits to a few of your employees and not others? This is an eligibility and richness of benefits issue. You may find yourself at risk for eligibility discrimination if, for example, you offer coverage only to the owner and an employee or two and not to the rest of your team. You also run into problems if you are found to be discriminating in the benefits your company provides. An example could be if you offer your management group 100 percent of premiums paid by the company and only offer your staff 50 percent of premiums paid. This is not related to the 50 full-time equivalent (FTE) large employer status.

While it might be possible to set up a plan to comply with the tax non-discrimination rules where employees throughout the company are offered different benefits, you also have to navigate through federal and state insurance laws and other Department of Labor regulations – the short answer is just don’t do it! The penalty for non-compliance is $100 per failure per day.

Do You Qualify For The Self-Insured Health Deduction?

Are you seeking to claim the self-insured health deduction (SIHD) on your 1040? If so, one of the following statements must be true:

You were self- employed and had a net profit for the year. (Profits should be reported on Schedule C, C-EZ or F).

You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment.

You received wages in 2014 from an S corporation in which you:

- Owned more than 2 percent of shares and- Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2.

Easy enough … until it isn’t.

S Corps: Catch 22

If you are basing your self-insured health deduction on only the S Corp eligibility criterion above, you have to be very careful to a.) not violate ACA non-discrimination and, b.) maintain your eligibility for the self-insured health deduction.

In order to get the self-insured health deduction, S Corp either needs to pay directly or reimburse the owner and include the amount on form W-2. Whichever of those two choices the S Corp makes, the S Corp is providing coverage to that owner. And, if you remember in the non-discrimination section above, ALL employees of the S Corp must receive the same benefit in order to comply with the non-discrimination rule. So by doing the actions required to get that owner eligibly for the self-insured health deduction, S Corp is covered by the ACA non-discrimination testing and it had better be sure to offer coverage to everybody.

And if you think you can just get around the rule by simply increasing wages in lieu of paying for or reimbursing shareholder’s premiums, you’re wrong. Doing this will put you at odds of the self-insured health deduction eligibility rules, making it impossible for your shareholders to claim the deduction.

Let this be your guide:

A shareholder of an S corporation (who doesn’t have a schedule C or one of the other SIHD criteria) will not be able to take the self-insured health deduction unless the S corporation is providing similar coverage to ALL other S corporation employees AND is including the amounts paid directly to the insurance provider or in payments reimbursed to the shareholder on Form W-2.

Remember, you do have options. A tax professional can help identify yours. Email Rea & Associates to learn more.

Obamacare is back in the news as a top story! Why? Because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that closely held, for-profit companies can claim religious exemption to avoid providing health insurance coverage for contraceptives.

An Obamacare provision stated that businesses with more than 50 employees must cover preventive care services, including birth control and morning-after pills to female employees. Today’s Supreme Court ruling provides relief for many U.S. for-profit companies by giving way to this religious exemption. Now companies that feel offering health insurance the covers contraceptives goes against their religious beliefs can opt out of providing this kind of coverage. Check out this New York Times article which provides a more in-depth look at the today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Of course, its too early to tell the practical impact of this decision – insurance companies are free to choose which kind of coverage is covered by their insurance plans, and the relative pricing of those plans, after all.

Obamacare Help

Do you feel like today’s Supreme Court ruling could impact your business and the health insurance coverage you offer to your employees? If it does, and you need help, contact Rea & Associates. Our health care reform tax experts can help you determine how it affects you and your business.

You may have heard some buzz lately about the Obama administration and/or the IRS barring employers from “dumping” employees onto the health care exchanges – with some truly severe cash penalties for doing so. But is this really “new” news? What exactly does this mean? It might surprise you to know that employee dumping is not all it seems.

A recent New York Times article explains that “employee dumping” is the practice where an employer drops health insurance coverage to its employees, the employees go to the health care exchange to buy insurance, and then the employer on a pre-tax basis reimburses its employees for their premiums. This “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” approach (with various ways to accomplish it) was one of the leading responses to this legislation that Obamacare consultants developed. The administrating agencies (IRS, HHS, DOL) shut this option down when they issues guidance in September 2013. ANY attempt by an employer to pay an employee a pre-tax benefit for health insurance has since then been a very dangerous approach, although some exceptions exist (e.g. retirees only). This current “news” is simply a clarification that these things are indeed busted.

Can You Still Drop Health Care Insurance Coverage?

What if you want to drop your coverage, send employees to the exchange, and then increase their after-tax pay so that they can pay for exchange insurance? That’s OK, it doesn’t conflict with the rules. It’s only pre-tax benefits you should be concerned with.

What if you increase worker pay as I just described, and then the employee sinks that cash into an HSA that they get from a bank (for free)? That gets them a tax deduction (up to certain limits) … is that OK? Yes! Remember that what the IRS is looking to prevent is employers trying to give pre-tax benefits without offering insurance – that is the “evil” that these regulations are designed to combat. Once the employer pays taxable wages to an employee, the employee is free to use whatever means they have available to be tax efficient.

A Pit Trap For The Unwary

So is “employee dumping” limited to the situation where employers are trying to push tax-free cash to employees? Actually no, and this is why I refer to this as “a pit trap for the unwary.” Dumping also refers to the practice of employers encouraging workers with high medical bills to go to the exchange.

What exactly does this mean? Think of it this way … As an employer, you have an insurance plan that still takes into account the health and claims of your workforce (they still exist). If you can get an employee to the exchange that has $400,000 of medical costs a year, you could potentially save a large sum of money and your employee is not harmed because they can get quality coverage on the exchange for no more than a healthy individual can.

Some companies throw a cash kicker on top for the employee to voluntarily drop coverage (what’s an extra $10,000 in cash if you are saving $100,000+). Everybody wins, right? Well, not the Exchange. If it’s discovered that you – the employer – are doing this, there are administrative rules in place that can throw that cost back at you. Insurance companies have a duty to report suspected employee dumping, so be careful!

Obamacare Help

Have you considered “dumping” or are you unsure if you’re heading down this path? If so, contact Rea & Associates. Our team of Ohio tax professionals can help you determine what path is best for you to take, as well as help you stay in compliance with Obamacare rules and avoid any pitfalls along the way.

As Obamacare becomes more and more of a reality to individuals, I’m being asked lots of questions. In the past few weeks, I received three questions that I’m finding are common concerns among the people I’ve talked with. I wanted to share these questions and provide some insight into each. So let me peel back the Obamacare “onion” and help you better understand how you may be impacted or what options you have available to you. (more…)

Obamacare is a complex piece of legislation. And in a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of Americans said they lack information they need to understand Obamacare and how it will impact them. (more…)

We’ve read for weeks that a government shutdown was possible, but at 12 a.m. this morning, it happened. It has been 17 years since the last government shutdown, and you, along with the rest of the American people, are probably wondering how the shutdown will impact their lives. Fortunately, last week the Internal Revenue Service published “FY 2014 Shutdown Contingency Plan (During Lapsed Appropriations) Non-Filing Season,” a set of guidelines that explains what will go on at the IRS during a shutdown. (more…)

The next Obamacare requirement deadline is right around the corner— are you ready? If you’re an employer, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires you to provide copies of one of the following insurance notices to all of your employees:

By now, you’ve been hearing a ton about the Affordable Care Act (yes, even from us), and you may be getting tired of all this news. However, it’s critical for you and your business to stay up-to-date on what is changing and what is being decided as it relates to the ACA. The Ohio Department of Insurance (DOI) recently announced in a press release that if you’re an individual consumer who chooses to buy health insurance through the federal government’s insurance exchange, you’ll be paying approximately 41 percent more than what you paid in 2013. And if you’re a business owner, you’ll see somewhere in the ballpark of an 18 percent increase. (more…)

And so it continues… the next deadline in a long list of fee deadlines for the Affordable Healthcare Act is fast approaching. If you are a business that is self-insured for health care (this includes Health Reimbursement Arrangements/Accounts), and if you had a plan year end on or between Oct. 1, 2012 and Dec. 31, 2012, then you have a new fee to pay by this Wednesday, July 31, 2013. Calendar year plans are included in this because their end date would have been Dec. 31, 2012.(more…)